White Hinterland

White Hinterland is the songwriting vehicle of Casey Dienel, whose chirpy vocals and jazzy arrangements draw similarities to Laura Nyro and Joni Mitchell. The Massachusetts native made her debut as a solo performer in 2006, when the album Wind-Up Canary was released by Hush Records. Dienel then returned to the recording studio with Matthew Jean-Paul Meyer, Maximillian Haft, and Christopher MacDonald in 2007, eschewing her brief solo career and becoming a bandleader instead. Later that year, she signed with the indie label Dead Oceans and changed the name of her act to White Hinterland. Phylactery Factory, the group's debut album, was released in March 2008, followed by the Luniculaire EP (an ambitious avant-garde record sung entirely in French) in October. Issued in 2010, the full-length Kairos helped to further cement the outfit's reputation for heady and soulful minimal pop. For third album Baby, Dienel moved back to her hometown of Scituate, Massachusetts, where she built her own studio in the basement of her parents' house, taught herself home-recording production, and funneled all of her energies into the much darker, more intricate pop songs that made up the album.